45 percent of CT adults have a chronic illness

Updated 10:48 pm, Thursday, May 22, 2014

When new patients arrive at the Seifert and Ford Community Health Clinic in Danbury, their initial examination often turns up the silent killers -- early stages of diabetes and high blood pressure.

"We see it every day,'' said Dr. William Delaney, medical director of the downtown clinic, which is part of Western Connecticut Health Network.

After an initial diagnosis of diabetes, he said, doctors often give their patients eye exams.

"That's where we can first see the damage to the blood vessels caused by diabetes -- behind the retinas," he said

The clinic's patients aren't an anomalous subset of people with poor health. Nearly half of the state's adults have been diagnosed with diabetes, hypertension or another chronic disease, according to a recent Connecticut Health Care Survey.

The telephone survey of 5,447 adults, conducted between June 2012 and February, showed that 45 percent of those surveyed reported having a chronic disease.

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Connecticut Health Care Survey45 percent of 5,447 adults report having chronic disease28 percent aged 18 to 44 report they have a serious illness23 percent of adults report they are obese; national average is 29 percent 13 percent of children reported to have asthma; national average is 9.3 percent11 percent of adults did not get care they needed in past year 28 percent report putting off needed medical care.

"With so many people reporting chronic illnesses and their complications, we have to have better access to care," she said.

But for people in the front line of community medicine, such findings are a fact of life.

"It doesn't surprise me,'' Delaney said.

Community Health Centers Inc. runs 13 clinics in the state -- including locations in Danbury, Norwalk and Stamford -- and sees about 130,000 patients a year.

Dr. Daren Anderson, chief quality officer for the centers, said he's studied the survey. Like Delaney, he isn't surprised.

"We see it in all our centers,'' Anderson said. "People come in suffering from obesity, and diabetes is a sequelae of obesity.''

And because people who are overweight are often sedentary, they also suffer from hypertension -- high blood pressure -- Anderson said.

Six health foundations released the survey results.

As in previous reports, the survey found persistent disparities in health care between racial and ethnic groups, but foundation officials said this is the first time residents have provided details about their own health.

While many state residents have access to high-quality health care, blacks and Latinos were more likely than whites to rate their health as fair or poor, to describe themselves as obese, and to that high costs have kept them from filling prescriptions.

These groups were also less likely to have health insurance, although that could change now that 208,000 residents have signed up for insurance under the Affordable Care Act, said Patricia Baker, president and CEO of the Connecticut Health Foundation.

"The issue we face is of health equity and disparity in Connecticut,'' Baker said. "We have disparities in the prevalence of obesity, diabetes and other conditions."

Anderson of Community Health Centers said the disparities of health outcomes in the state between higher- and lower-income residents and between whites and minorities might be lessened as people sign up for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. The centers actively encouraged its eligible patients to sign up for the program if they qualify.

"We can give them great care in our clinics,'' he said. "But if they have to go to an orthopedist, if they need x-rays, if they're in the hospital, they need more than we can provide,'' he said.

But better access to insurance won't be a silver bullet, Anderson said.

"There are a lot of ethnic differences, and differences in genetics and culture, that we have to be very attentive to,'' he said.

Some of the survey's findings include:

Twenty-three percent of adults reported that they were obese, compared to a national average of 29 percent, and 34 percent of the adults reported that their children were overweight or obese.

Thirteen percent of children were reported to have asthma, compared to a national average of 9.3. That figure was surprisingly high and needs more analysis, Honigfeld said.

About a quarter of black and Latino adults reported that their health is fair or poor, compared to 10 percent of whites.

Among adults, 11 percent said they did not get the care they needed in the past year, and 28 percent reported postponing needed medical care. More than half of them said they worry about the cost.

Foundation officials said there were bright spots in the survey, including that children have particularly high rates of being insured and receiving quality dental care.

Since 2005, state agencies and non-profit groups have focused heavily on encouraging parents to bring their children to a dentist by the time they are 1 year old, Honigfeld said. Previously, the norm was to wait until age 3.

Pediatricians have also been trained to promote better dental care, by suggesting, for example, that parents add water to juices their children drink, she said.

The survey revealed that many positives about children's health care, including that 98 percent of children were reported as healthy and that 98 percent are covered by health insurance.

Only 6 percent of parents reported postponing medical care for their children in the past year, compared to 28 percent of adults who reported delaying their own care.